PhD Candidate: Closed-Loop Deep Brain Stimulation System at the Donders Centre for Cognition

The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour is a world-class interfaculty research centre, that houses more than 700 researchers devoted to understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of the human mind. Research at the Donders Institute is focused around four themes: 1.

Language and communication

, 2.

Perception, action and control

, 3.

Plasticity and memory

, 4.

Neural computation and neurotechnology

. Excellent, state-of-the-art research facilities are available for the broad range of neuroscience research that is being conducted at the Donders Institute. The Donders Institute has been assessed by an international evaluation committee as ‘excellent’ and recognised as a ‘very stimulating environment for top researchers, as well as for young talent’. The Donders Institute fosters a collaborative, multi-disciplinary, supportive research environment with a diverse international staff. English is the lingua franca at the Institute. 

The offered PhD position is within the group of PI Michael Tangermann, who is investigating machine learning methods for the decoding of high-dimensional and noisy brain and behavioural signals and algorithms for closed-loop neurotechnological systems with the human in the loop. Unsolved challenges in this respect are how to compensate for non-stationarity over time, and how to deal with small labelled training data sets and transfer trained machine learning models between sessions, users and experimental protocols. Algorithm developments are regularly implemented and evaluated in closed-loop systems with health users and in clinical applications with patients. Examples are brain-computer interfaces for communication and control, human-robot interaction scenarios, systems supporting rehabilitation of stroke patients and adaptive deep brain stimulation systems. The research group emphasises mutual appreciation and collaboration, as the challenging topics under investigation require an interdisciplinary team effort.

You will be part of the Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience .